The Riddle of the Night Part 26

There was no question whatsoever regarding the man's condition.

Satisfied now, Cleek felt his pulse, pushed up one of his eyelids and examined the eye itself. The pupil was largely dilated, the white suffused considerably, and both were slightly filmed.

"Hum-m-m!" he breathed conclusively, then turned from the man and looked at the decanters and gla.s.ses on the littered table. "Port, Brandy, Benedictine, Scotch. To be sure! to be sure! Who is to know the taste of a mere guest in the matter of his after-dinner drink? So, if it is put in _all_----" He took up the decanters one by one, sampled their contents in turn, and smiled one of his queer crooked smiles when he set the last one down.

"Clever, very clever, my friend," he said. "And who was to tell you that the guest would not drink at all?"

Then he turned on his heel suddenly and left the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE OPEN WINDOW

He had scarcely taken a dozen steps down the hallway, however, before he encountered General Raynor, who had just then reentered the house by the front door.

His rugged old face wore a look of deep anxiety, as though the exciting scene through which he had so recently pa.s.sed bore heavily upon his spirits, despite Cleek's attempt to allay his distress by branding Dollops as a possible sneak thief; but he brightened perceptibly and made a valiant effort to appear quite at his ease when he looked up and saw Cleek.

"Get your call over the telephone all right, Mr. Barch?" he inquired pleasantly.

"Yes, thanks," said Cleek serenely, still keeping up his "Johnnie" air.

"Awfully obliged to you, I'm sure. d.i.c.kens of an important message.

Should have been in no end of a hole if I hadn't received it. But I say, General, you ought to be more careful, you know, especially with sneak thieves about."

"As how, Mr. Barch?"

"Why, that blessed swing window in the library. I found the thing unfastened, don't you know."

He hadn't, of course, for he had not been near it. But his statement undeniably agitated the General, though he made a brave effort to disguise it.

"Did you?" he said. "That's peculiar. I never noticed it. I must speak to Johnston about it; it's his duty to see that it is locked, and I supposed he had done so. Still, it's of no great consequence as it happens. The sneak thief didn't enter by that way, I am sure."

"No, but he might easily have done so; and if he had come in there while you were alone you might have had a warm time of it; don't you think so, eh, what?"

"I fancy _he_ would have had a warm time of it, as you express it, Mr.

Barch. I'm not so old but I know how to take care of myself, believe me."

"No, I suppose not," said Cleek. "Had a jolly lot of practice in your young days--with the gloves and all that. Forty-fifth Queen's Own used to have a national reputation for the best boxers and wrestlers in the service, I'm told. Suppose it was the same in your day; and you got a lot of practice out there in Simla in your subaltern days."

"You are wrong in both particulars. I did not belong to the Forty-fifth Queen's Own, Mr. Barch, and I was not billeted to India. I pa.s.sed out of Sandhurst into the Imperial Blues, and from the time I was twenty-two until I was twenty-six I was stationed at Malta."

Cleek made a mental tally of those two statements.

"Oh, I see; mistake on my part," he said serenely. "Malta was it? And the Imperial Blues? Thought Harry said the other. I've got a rotten memory. But it doesn't matter which, does it, so long as you learned the trick, and are able to put up a stiff fight and floor a burglar still?

I'll lay you could floor one in short order, too, when I come to look at you," he went on, glancing the General up and down with apparent admiration. "Lord! shouldn't like to run foul of you when your temper's up. Built like a blessed gladiator. Shoulders on you like a giant; arms like--mind if I feel what they're like?"

Impudently taking hold of him before he could reply or resent the familiarity, Cleek moved the General's forearm up as if to see the swelling of the biceps.

"That's what I call muscle!" he exclaimed. "What a wrist! What a fist to floor a man or---- Hullo! been flooring some one since I left you, General? Big green smudge on your cuff, as if you'd been up against a mossy wall? Didn't get into a sc.r.a.p with Sir Philip after I left you, did you, eh?"

There was no gainsaying it, the General's face grew absolutely white as he looked down and saw that green smudge on the white cuff which protruded beyond the sleeve of his evening coat. It was evident he had not noticed it before.

"No, certainly I have _not_!" he rapped out sharply as he plucked away his arm. "Sir Philip Clavering has gone home. And if you will pardon my saying it, Mr. Barch, I object to being handled."

"Awful sorry; did it before I thought," said Cleek vacantly. "No offence, eh? Because, you know, none was meant. Ought to have remembered; ought to have remembered half a dozen things when I come to think of it. One of 'em is that you and Sir Philip weren't likely to sc.r.a.p like a couple of drunken navvies; and t'other is that you couldn't have got wall-moss on your cuff if you had, when there wasn't any wall where I left you. So you couldn't have got it there, of course."

"And as that settles it, I think we can abandon the subject with profit to both, Mr. Barch," said the General stiffly. "As a matter of fact, I don't know where nor how I did get the smudge; and it's of no consequence anyway. And now, if you will pardon me, I'll ring for Johnston to lock up the house--we always retire to bed early at the Grange, Mr. Barch--and have a wee drappie o' whisky and turn in. The evening has been unpleasantly eventful, and I feel the need of something in the way of stimulant."

"So do I, by Jove! Never drank a blessed drop to-night, didn't feel up to it, don't you know; but if you don't mind my toddling into the dining-room and helping myself----"

"By all means do so, Mr. Barch, by all means!" interposed the General with something akin to eagerness. "You will find plenty there. Help yourself."

"Thanks very much. But come to think of it, you haven't had a drink to-night, either. Told Hawkins you didn't feel like it, I recollect."

"No, I didn't at the time, but I certainly require it now; so if----"

"Good business!" interjected Cleek airily. "Come in and let's have one together. Harry's asleep, so I shan't have any company; and as I never like to drink alone, and you are my host, and there's plenty in the dining-room----"

"Pray don't think me discourteous, Mr. Barch," interposed the General blandly, "but I think I will take my whisky hot this evening; and as I make a practice of never taking a hot whisky until I am safely between the sheets, will you pardon me if I do not join you, but have mine served in my bedroom to-night?"

"Yes, certainly," said Cleek. "Only if I'm left to drink alone I'm apt to take two or three instead of one, and my doctor says I oughtn't to, don't you know."

"Doctors are not infallible, Mr. Barch; they often make errors.

Good-night."

"Good-night," said Cleek. "But if I have a headache in the morning--oh, well, I can't help it. If I have one I'll have it I suppose. Here goes!"

He walked back along the hall and went into the dining-room and shut the door, leaning heavily against it and breathing through his shut teeth the one word, "G.o.d!"

The footsteps of the General clicked off down the hall, but Cleek never stirred, never moved a muscle, until their dwindling sound dropped off into sudden silence and all was still. Then, as softly as any cat, he twitched round, opened the door, closed it after him, and stood alone in the hall.

He moved on tiptoe to the library. The door was closed. He stopped and listened.

The faint rustling sound of papers told its own story. The General had not gone to his bedroom, he was in there!

With fleet, unsounding steps Cleek moved from that closed door to the open one of the drawing-room, remembering what Ailsa had said of how Mrs. Raynor had dozed over her coffee while they waited for him to come, and of how, after Hamer had carried in his note, the good lady had rallied the girl, and then gone off to bed because, she said, she was sleepy--sleepy at half-past eight o'clock!

Taking into consideration the events of the evening, he had counted upon the possibility of something happening; and the moment he entered that room and looked round him he knew that it had done so.

The butler's evening off; the excitement and distraction occasioned by that screaming police whistle sounding from the grounds and sending all the servants flocking out. These things had conspired to upset the routine of things as they should be in a well-regulated house; and lo!

the silver tray and the coffee service and the cups, used and unused alike, had been overlooked, and there they still were, awaiting removal.

And beside them stood a liqueur stand with Chartreuse, Benedictine, Creme de Menthe, and a half-dozen tiny Venetian gla.s.ses.

Liqueurs with coffee! He went over and looked at the gla.s.ses; so much, so very much, depended upon that. If more than one had been used; if Ailsa, too, had taken liqueur---- No, she had not! Only one gla.s.s had been used, and Mrs. Raynor had gone to bed!

He rubbed the tip of his finger round the inner side of that one used gla.s.s, and put it to his tongue.